Head Tricks

I sheepishly admit I have never learned to whistle with my fingers. I can whistle rather melodiously using the puckered lips method, but no ear-bleeding “HEY, PAY ATTENTION!!” penetrator with my fingers.

I think that’s the kind of thing you either learn by about 13 or it isn’t going to happen. Something happens to your ability to pick up new body tricks when you hit puberty – maybe you just can’t properly concentrate anymore with your hormones running around with their asses on fire.

But I can do most of the other head tricks. And I can do something I’ve never seen anyone else do: I can wiggle my scalp. I picked this up when I was trying to figure out how to wiggle my ears, and in fact this method makes my ears shimmy like jello in an earthquake, but I am not really wiggling my ears in a precise manner: I’m wiggling my entire scalp.

I don’t really know how I do it, but it feels like I am pulling back with some obscure muscle on the sides of my head, above and behind my ears. This ability has been a boon to my social existence beyond all reason: girls are amused by the oddest things, as are new drinking buddies.

Nebraska congressman and former national championship football coach Tom Osborne can wiggle his ears too:

The Third District Republican was visiting Grand Island’s Shoemaker Elementary School Thursday when a student went really personal.

The student asked: “Can you wiggle your ears?”

The former national championship football coach said he could, then demonstrated. He said he could shake his eyes, too, and showed the gymnasium full of youngsters how he could do that, too.

“I’m a really talented guy,” Osborne said. [AP]

Show off. Republican.

But back to me. My tongue can do tricks too: roll over in BOTH directions, and it has the mileage and dexterity to touch the tip of my nose. The latter feat violates the puberty rule as I actually picked that one up in college. I worked on it for a couple of hours one night in the mirror of the dorm bathroom, drawing more than one raised eyebrow in the process I might add.

I was really pissed because my girlfriend could do it and I couldn’t. I went to the library (no Internet in those days) and found a book on stupid body stunts and found the key: you extend your tongue straight out as far as it will go, and then FOLD it up to your nose. The key is in the extension. You hear that about a lot of things.